Author: Caron @pcmcreative

Twitter Foundations

Many people are not maximising the potential of Twitter to market their work because they don’t understand how to engage their audience/s and create two-way communication.

This series of four posts aims to help you do this with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Email - to identify your audience/s and encourage them to look at what you are tweeting and to actively respond.

This first post is about untangling and quantifying your Twitter network. Whether you are an Equity, NUJ, Writers’ Guild or MU member, your networks and audiences will have a similar makeup including:

• Friends
• Fellow Professionals
• Previous employers
• Potential employers
• Influencing Professionals
• Venues
• Companies
• Festivals
• Events

As we’re talking about using Twitter professionally here, your family is best looked after on Facebook through your personal profile. This isn't to say family can't follow you beyond Facebook activities but I feel I have to separate the conversations. Facebook is a unique audience space in my opinion and this will feature in post 2.

In any relationship reciprocal sentiment or potential mutual benefit is essential, e.g., do we have something in common/is there something that we need from each other? So, when you’re developing your Twitter audience, consider:

• What is the nature of the relationship being cultured?
• What is the expectation of the relationship, e.g., obtaining paid work?
• What do you need to say that’s of interest to the audience?

What makes up your Twitter network?

Apart from the cascading stream of updates that make up your timeline, your Twitter profile provides several metrics to help evaluate the development to your account. Twitter gives a number of ‘Tweets’ you have posted to date, (see above screenshot left to right) Following (the people you’re following) and Followers (the people who follow you).

In audience and engagement terms the accounts you are ‘Following’ are those posting Twitter updates you can see in your timeline and Followers are accounts receiving your updates, hopefully listening to what you have to say. The Venn diagram where Following intersect Followers is the game. So how can you culture an active presence with realistic results to help you professionally?

Is the feeling mutual?

The count Twitter fails to provide is 'mutual friends' or 'reciprocal followers', i.e., who do you follow who also follows you in return? This is the foundation of Direct Messaging. The ability to message another Twitter account directly is the key to creating and pursuing opportunities in the off-line world.

All projects even those in the seed phase are never harmed by a presence. It is a commitment to the idea once it takes shape. An avatar, web friendly name and a concise
160-character biography is a great foundation of any project. It's a manifestation of concept.

As an example, CansChat is an idea from March 2012. It has had no promotion. As you can see it has a small following (the 95 followers) and follows 109 in the hope of making mutual and information rich connections.

To build my Twitter networks I use several tools to understand how they are developing and growing.

With CansChat (see above screenshot), I’d started by following Twitter accounts mentioning "stage manager" “Stagemanagement” and "backstage" in their profiles and recent tweets using Twitter's native search facility.

Follow Tool app answers the questions: Who in my ‘Followers’ do I follow, who reciprocates and who is not following me? These figures are in contrast to the CansChat profile screenshot above.

• Followers I don't follow = 19
• Users not following me back = 33
• Followers I follow back = 76

There are 76 accounts who I can direct message.
There are 19 accounts following CansChat who CansChat does not follow back. They receive CansChat tweets but CansChat does not see theirs, The total Audience is 95

How do you decide who to friend and who to follow and who to connect with and who to keep as audience? Not every follower is going have the potential to provide momentum to your projects or avenues to work. In general a low follow count with a high following count indicates a potential authority. For example, @BBCBreaking and @BBCNews

These are trustworthy sources providing current affairs news updates. Both accounts are unlikely to follow you. @BBCNews is following correspondents, programmes and other BBC news content Twitter accounts. The people who @BBCNews follows (88) is worth a look and a source of developing your Twitter account for potentially more personal and informed news and media contacts to influence your off-line career. This is especially poignant for journalists and writers.

Evaluating your sources of industry opportunities on Twitter

Take CastingCallPro, a well known online service with a Twitter presence.

(screenshot profile used by permission)

I think actors should consider following this account. It has an audience of 18,870 and listens to 9,533 accounts. It tweets about acting jobs and there are lots of accounts listening. The figure we don't see is how many of those following the @castingcallpro account is being followed back? The elusive mutual Venn diagram mentioned earlier.

Using friendorfollow.com it shows @CastingCallPro has 5,186 engaged followers.

Who CastingCallPro is following is an insight in to who it wants to listen to and engage with. You may find accounts you want to follow too.

This leaves 4,365 that don't receive CCP tweets. This figure requires awareness to effectively use Twitter as a professional tool and make it work for you.

Summary

Referring back to the list I gave earlier:

• Friends
• Fellow Professionals
• Previous employers
• Potential employers
• Influencing Professionals
• Venues
• Companies
• Festivals
• Events

Consider your Twitter engagement intentions:
Who are you following?
Who is following you back?

Identify your "not following you back" count using friendorfollow.com and assess whether you should unfollow them by asking yourself if they are a source of useful or interesting information.

If you want to look further into your Twitter audience, I’d recommend Social Bro, Tweetreach, FlockofBirds and Twitter

Twitter Foundations

Many people are not maximising the potential of Twitter to market their work because they don’t understand how to identify and engage their audience/s and then create two-way communication.

This series of four posts aims to help you do this with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and email - to identify your audience/s and encourage it/them to look at what you are communicating and to actively respond.

This first post is about untangling and quantifying your Twitter network. Whether you are an Equity, NUJ, Writers’ Guild or MU member, your networks and audiences will have a similar makeup including:

• Friends
• Fellow Professionals
• Previous employers
• Potential employers
• Influencing Professionals
• Venues
• Companies
• Festivals
• Events

As we're talking about using Twitter for professional purposes here, I'll deal with 'family' using Facebook, which I'll talk about in the next post.

In any relationship reciprocal sentiment or potential mutual benefit is essential, e.g., do we have something in common/is there something that we need from each other? So, when you’re developing your Twitter audience, consider:

• What is the nature of the relationship being cultured?
• What is the expectation of the relationship, e.g., obtaining paid work?
• What do you need to say that’s of interest to the audience?

What makes up your twitter network?

Apart from the cascading stream of updates that make up your timeline, your Twitter profile provides several metrics to help evaluate and develop your account. Twitter gives the number of ‘Tweets’ (messages you have posted to date), the number 'Following' (the people you’re following) and the number of Followers (people who are following you).

In audience and engagement terms, the accounts you are ‘Following’ are those posting Twitter updates you can see in your timeline and Followers are accounts receiving your updates and hopefully listening to what you have to say.

Is the feeling mutual?

So how can you culture an active presence with realistic results to help you professionally? The count Twitter fails to provide is 'mutual friends' or 'reciprocal followers', i.e., who do you follow who also follows you in return? This is the foundation of Direct Messaging. The ability to message another Twitter account directly is the key to creating and pursuing opportunities in the off-line world.

All projects even those in the seed phase are never harmed by a presence. It is a commitment to the idea once it takes shape. An avatar, web friendly name and a concise 160-character biography in the Twitter profile is a great foundation for a project. It's a manifestation of concept.

As an example, CansChat is one of my ideas from March 2012. It've only promoted it via Twitter. It has a small following (the 95 followers) and follows 109 in the hope of making mutual and information rich connections.

To build my CansChat Twitter networks, I use several tools to understand how these networks are developing and growing.

I started by following Twitter accounts mentioning "stage manager" “Stagemanagement” and "backstage" in their profiles and recent tweets using Twitter's native search facility.

Follow Tool shows me twitter audience counts which for me add meaning to my development decisions. This app answers the questions: who in my followers do I follow, who reciprocates and who doesn't follow me?

• Followers I don't follow = 19
• Users not following me back = 33
• Followers I follow back = 76

This tells me and shows me in isolated lists that there are 76 accounts where I see their tweets and they can see mine. I can also direct message these accounts. There are 19 accounts following CansChat who CansChat does not follow back. They receive CansChat tweets but CansChat does not see theirs.

Who do you follow?

How do you decide who to friend and who to follow and who to connect with and who to keep as audience? Not every follower is going have the potential to provide momentum to your projects or avenues to work. In general a low follow count with a high following count indicates a potential authority. For example, @BBCBreaking and @BBCNews:

These are trustworthy sources providing current affairs news updates. Both accounts are unlikely to follow you. @BBCNews is following correspondents, programmes and other BBC news content Twitter accounts. The people who @BBCNews follows (88) is worth a look and a source of developing your Twitter account for potentially more personal and informed news and media contacts to influence your off-line career. This is especially poignant for journalists and writers.

Evaluating sources of industry opportunity on Twitter

For example, Casting Call Pro (CPP) - which I think actors would do well to follow - has an audience of just over 18,800 and listens to around 9,500 accounts. The organisation tweets about acting jobs and there are lots of accounts listening. The figure we don't see however is the 'conversation potential' or engagement value, that is, how many of those following @castingcallpro are followed back.

I have discovered the following using friendorfollow.com that @CastingCallPro has 5,086 engaged followers. Who CastingCallPro is following is an insight in to who it wants to listen to and engage with. You may find accounts you want to follow too using this method.

This leaves 4,365 that don't engage with CCP tweets. It's important to be aware of this figure to use Twitter effectively as a professional tool that works for you.

Summary

Referring to the list I gave earlier in the post (i.e., friends, fellow professionals, previous employers etc), consider your engagement potential:

• Who are you following?
• Who is following you?
• Identify your 'not following you back' count using friendorfollow.com and assess whether you should unfollow them by asking yourself if they are a source of useful or interesting information. Quality rather than quantity of following and followed by is the key (post 4 will look into listening and filtering Twitter).

Also, if you want to look further into the Twitter audience, I use:

Social Bro, Tweetreach, FlockofBirds and Twitter itself.

Post 2 will look at Facebook (audiences engagement) and LinkedIn (professional development) – two ends of the social networking scale in my opinion.

Platforms and Portals

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

Five blog posts can't miraculously turn you in to a crowd powerhouse and fund all those projects simmering on the back burner. Looking at the landscape of crowd power and focusing on aspects to consider may inspire you to take the plunge.

My understanding of crowdfunding was helped enormously by my understanding of the networks and audience needed to make it work. Following the projects of singer/ songwriter, Allison Weiss (mentioned in post 2) and independent audience developer, Sally Hodgeson who works with projects to develop crowd funding strategy and campaigns. There are professional crowdfunders.

Setting the goal, reaching the target, collecting the funds and delivering the project

This classic model uses social networked connections, leveraging Facebook and Twitter, interconnecting audiences and outreach to maintain existing fans/audience members.

All of the platforms demand a good set up. Intricate planning is also necessary as there is no money for the project without a successful campaign outcome. So before concluding to leave you to discover your crowdfunding route, getting your money at the end is important to consider.

Money matters - getting to your cash

Here are the main platforms commission or fee policies on campaign completion. Looking at the projects running is the best way to decide which platform to choose.

Indiegogo
It’s free to sign up, to create a campaign, and to contribute to a campaign. When your campaign raises funds, Grunder Garage charges a 9.0% fee on the funds you raise. If you reach your goal, you get 5.0% back, for an overall fee of 4.0%.
http://www.indiegogo.com/how-pricing-works-on-indiegogo

Kickstarter
UK projects: If funding succeeds, funds are debited directly from backers' cards. There is a 14-day window for collecting and processing pledges. After that, funds will be transferred directly to your bank account.
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creator%20questions#PaymUk

WeFund
WEFUND does not charge anyone anything if a project does not meet its funding target. If it does, WEFUND charges the project creator a 5% fee. Paypal charge 3.4% and 20 pence per transaction. So, (if successful) at the end of your campaign, every time you receive a payment Paypal will send it to you minus 3.4% and a 20p fee.
http://wefund.com/frequently-asked-questions/

For Photojournalists

Whilst researching this blog series I discovered a sector specific crowd funding platform for photojournalists which also charges a commission on money generated by your efforts.

Emphas.is
On Emphas.is photojournalists pitch their projects directly to the public. By agreeing to back a story, for a minimum contribution of $10 the public are making sure that the issues they care about receive the in-depth coverage they deserve. This is the one and only 'perk' - "In exchange you are invited along on the journey."

If a project is fully funded Emphas.is takes a 15% fee towards operational costs. The 15% fee goes towards paying a small staff to run daily operations and maintaining and developing the platform.

Fundraising is an older and probably more familiar term associated with raising money and this final example to explore encompasses collection methods to suit all projects.

GoFundMe
Personal online fundraising websites are perfect for individuals, groups & organisations!

GoFundMe will automatically deduct a 5% fee from each donation you receive. If you don't receive any donations, then you won't pay anything at all. You'll be ask to connect or create a PayPal account inside of GoFundMe during the sign up process. PayPal charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

GoFundMe users can select between 3 different campaign types.

Personal Donation Campaigns
'Personal Donation' campaigns receive their money immediately - there’s no time-limits or collection requirements. Each and every payment you receive is yours! Your GoFundMe page will continue to accept donations even after your goal is met.

Charity Fundraising Campaigns
Money raised for 'Charity Fundraising' campaigns will be sent to the selected charity on a monthly basis. All donations received will be sent via check to the charity or non-profit you select from our certified list.

All-or-Nothing Crowdfunding Campaigns
Select this option if your project or idea requires a certain amount of money. Your supporters will only be charged if you're able to reach your funding goal before your deadline arrives. If your goal is reached, then your supporters will be charged and you'll receive your money. If you don't reach your goal prior to your deadline, then your supporters will not be charged. Learn more about crowdfunding.

Practical guides, tips, resources

How to get crowdfunding
By: Emily Speed
http://www.a-n.co.uk/knowledge_bank/article/1002915/77173

Crowdfunding Resource
Artquest provides everything a visual artist needs to know by encouraging critical engagement and providing practical support.
http://www.artquest.org.uk/articles/view/crowdfunding

Taleist Article
Crowdfunding for self-publishing authors: How passionate fans can make your book a reality. http://blog.taleist.com/2012/02/21/crowdfunding-for-self-publishing-authors-how-passionate-fans-can-make-your-book-a-reality/

Arts channel is brought to you by WeDidThis - Part of Peoplefund.it
WeDidThis continues to grow a new movement of arts micro-philanthropists, dedicated to supporting UK artists and organisations in a new and exciting way.  A UK based leading arts crowdfunding platform, dedicated to making great fan-funded art happen.

In its first year WeDidThis funded over 40 projects from over 1,600 donations. This included everything from an Orchestra pub tour, to a selection of shows at the Brighton fringe and a project teaching street dance to children in Rwanda.
http://www.peoplefund.it/tips/

My closing tips…

• Don’t forget which audience you are part of and explore both
• Working the crowd can be a time consuming job
• Factor in the platform commission and paypal fees
• Experience being part of a crowdfunded project.

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

Making money

In Crowdfunding (1) we looked at the potential in (2) and (3) we looked at PERKS, identifying what's in it for your crowd. In this post we will look at the crowd. The Audience, your audience and most surprisingly who's audience you are in.

This is the most unexpected twist for me. When I started looking in to crowdfunding it was with full projects in mind. As a stage manager propping shows the free ticket and credit in the programme was the perk. With a little imagination a whole raft of perks can be dreamed up from signed programmes to dinner with the company. But as you will have gathered the platform you pick to crowd fund whether it features successful campaigns does not mean automatic success for you.

Where is my crowd?

The audience you have now - the network existing around you is where you need to begin. For example:

• Email contacts database
• Twitter followers
• Facebook fans
• Eventbrite audience

Platforms such as WeFund, Pozible and Sponsume are specifically tailored for media and culture projects. This is what many think of with Crowdfunding. One idea shared with an audience or fan base that stay with you through out the entire project and beyond.

Whose crowd am I in?

This is the twist. I have recently worked on a project where two of the team came directly from crowd talent platform eLace a crowd of skilled workers. Identifying your own skills is key to making money using these services.

‘PeoplePerHour’ is a community marketplace that connects small businesses with talent working remotely online. Whether it’s creating a logo, designing a website, writing some copy or a quick translation, PeoplePerHour aims to allow small businesses to keep their core lean and get their job done easily, quickly and reliably.

For example:
Journalism freelances on PeoplePerHour
Voice over artists on PeoplePerHour

At PeoplePerHour you set your hourly rate and the service you can provide. Writers, voice over artists, copywriters and presenters are popular 'hourlies'.

So funding from the crowd has two sides. Tapping in to a pre-existing audience and one where the crowd taps in to your resources and skills, i.e., what you have to offer.

Next time – Crowdfunding Platforms and Portals.

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

PERKS are the corner stone of crowdfunding

• Credits or logos in promotional literature.
• Entry to your event or a ticket for a performance
• Special edition promotional literature
• VIP attention at your event or performance
• Experience days - A day with the company.
• Experience - Diner with the company
• First edition publications to funders
• Signed first editions…

I hope you get the idea.

A closer look

As an example and to finish I want to introduce you to Alison Weiss a singer, musician and songwriter. Alison has an established fan base that is her 'crowd' and she harnesses the power of that crowd to produce albums using crowd funding platform Kickstarter.

These are her campaigns:

Allison Weiss makes a full-length record! by Allison Weiss
http://kck.st/vJgXxG

Allison Weiss does it again (with your help) by Allison Weiss
http://kck.st/vhzPLY

A selection of the Perks from her Dec 2011 campaign to raise the funds for her next album.

• Pledge $5 or more - THANKS - Access to exclusive updates right here on Kickstarter, plus your name and link listed on my website with a big THANKS!
• Pledge $10 or more - JUST A TASTE - Get everything above, plus 1 track emailed to you the day of the release. JUST A TASTE, you know?!
• Pledge $15 or more - DIGITAL PREORDER - Get everything above, plus a digital copy of the record complete with album artwork, liner notes, and a secret thank-you video.
• Pledge $30 or more - PREORDER + PARTY FAVORS - Get everything above, plus a signed physical copy of the record, a digital goodie bag of extra videos and songs, PLUS I'll put you on the guest list for a real-life listening party to be held in NYC before the record comes out.
• Pledge $40 or more - PAJAMA PARTY - Get everything above + a ticket to my celebratory internet show where I will play the whole record start to finish while wearing an adult-sized onesie. We'll drink, we'll laugh, we'll sing, we'll never forget. Everyone will wear pajamas including myself. It will be the greatest night of your life and you don't even have to put pants on.
• Pledge $50 or more - DVD EXTRAS - Get everything above, plus a 'directors commentary' style DVD where producer Chris Kuffner and I talk about each song as they happen. Hear about the making-of, our favorite parts, backstories on specific songs, and how much we love each other!
• Pledge $75 or more - HANDMADE SONGZINE - Get everything above, plus a limited edition zine-style songbook with chords, lyrics, photos, and stories about every song I've released since 2008, handmade, designed, and signed by yours truly!
• Pledge $100 or more - REMEMBERED FOREVER - Get everything above, plus I'll list your name in the liner notes however you want it. It could be your real name (i.e. John Smith) or it could be a nickname (i.e. Bones). You could even put someone else's name in there (i.e. Grandma, Jessica Alba, The Pope). I'll also include a special note to you when I sign your copy of the record.

There were 19 Perks in total offering opportunities in exchange for up to $10,000

The anatomy of a successful crowdfunding campaign and of course its resulting project.

Mission Statement, your appeal to your crowd.

• The mission video
• The perks for support
• The conversation
• The target
• The goal
• The delivery

As well as accomplishing and smashing her funding targets (see pictures above), Alison now has an engaged audience of 'backers'. The crowdfunding platforms provide engagement tools to personalise the process. The most fundamental statistic illustrated well by Alison is how many projects she herself has contributed to.

So what do you have to offer? Blogging and sharing your journey makes for good content. Getting in to the habit of capturing and evaluating how your creative output can be seen as a perk for your audience is the challenge. Some specialist arts crowd funding platforms (not all) will assist you in compiling your campaign.

I will look at platforms and resources to get you started in post 4.

To do:
Write a list of the PERKs you can offer. Crowdfunding for the arts can work.

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

Show me the landscape

Perks, What do I have to offer?

On reflection and the discovery of this graphic (see below), crowd sourcing can be seen as an umbrella term. I often talk about the landscape of social media and its associated technologies but the analogy of sheltering your crowd beneath a brolly has a nice resonance.

Four major sectors constitute the current thinking surrounding crowd sourcing

• Microtasks
• Macrotasks
• Crowdfunding
• Contests

Microtasking is in essence the collection of or processing of small tasks to complete a larger task or aggregate data.

An excellent example of this is the UK Snow Map – http://uksnowmap.com created by @benmarsh

This site searches Twitter for real-time snow reports and displays them on the map. Tweet the hashtag #uksnow, your location (postcode, town name or geotag your tweet), and rate the snow that is falling out of ten (0/10 for nothing - 10/10 for a blizzard). You can also include the depth of snow (cm or inches), attach a photo and add a description to your tweet.

Story – I was due to attend a meeting in London but literally overnight a massive bout of snow fell. The rail line's website was not updated and was clearing overloaded as it continually crashed.

I had to get on the train before it was polite to call mobiles, it was early. Was it snowing in London? Was there any point in venturing out? I asked my twitter network and this was the service I was directed to. The more data contributed the more reliable the resulting output.

I did not travel to London that day partly because of the responses I received from my Twitter network but also because the Snow Map reflected the snow outside my window and the reports coming out of London were worse. Seeing the news I know I made the right desicion.

Macrotasking in essence is the collection of knowledge and ideas. Old style forums and buletin boards would fall under this category. Collaboration on research and development for projects, programs or articles is a valuable use of Macrotask based platforms. A simplistic example is the Question and Answer forum platform Quora. This crowd sourcing tactic often follows a supply and demand perspective I'll look at this further in post 3.

A fully-fledged ideas crowd sourcing platform if you want to take a look is Crowdicity. But this series of posts are about understanding crowd sourcing and its application to generate income.

So remains Crowdfunding and Contests.

At this point a word of warning. As creatives we are in danger of finding ourselves in "profit share" or "good for your portfolio" projects none of which feed, clothe or put a roof over our head.

Contests can have you submitting work you design to a brief where only one design wins or less ethically where the organiser takes the best elements from all the entries and commissions a designer. Tread carefully. I am going to concentrate on making money and funding to bring money in without outgoing speculation. With contest crowdsourcing you are the crowd. Writers and designers are particularly vulnerable to this crowd source mechanism.

I have reserved crowd funding until last as it’s important to understand the crowd sourcing landscape or umbrella. In the next post of this series I will reflect on audience and where you are in respect of audience.

To close this post I want to ask you:

Where is your existing audience/community? What relationship do they have with you, your company, organisation or freelance practice? What do you have to offer?

By Caron Lyon from PCM Creative

I first recognised the potential of crowd sourcing and crowd funding during the 2011 British Arts Festival roadshow. I attended a one-day conference at Theatre's Trust. The power of the crowd and it's prominence as a viable means of raising money for projects to develop working prototyped concepts in to salable product is the most prominent form of CrowdFunding. But for the very first time I saw arts based platforms being profiled. Crowd translated directly to Audience when it comes to Arts and culture based funding.

CrowdFunding - Show me the money?

What is Crowd Sourcing?

The term, coined by Wired magazine writer Jeff Howe in 2006, is found rooted in the analogy with the term outsourcing.

Harnesses Web 2.0 (reactive web environments) and communities of wisdom gathered through social networks leveraging the crowds’ wisdom to achieve business objectives.

A NTU research project for PCM in 2011 concluded that CrowdSourcing was ‘a process by which organisations or individuals outsource their unsolved problems to an online external group of people so as to gain innovative ideas or solutions for solving their problems.’

Crowdsourcing as a way to implement outside-in-knowledge flows with the crowd as a particular knowledge provider.

Crowdsourcing is a way to engage consumers in social networks and virtual communities and to stimulate their financial participation in projects proposed by someone else.

I want to introduce you to arts, media and writing platforms but before then I think a perspective on the trend is important. I also want to flip the crowd concept on its head and take a look at being the crowd and how that can benefit creative arts and media practitioners.

First lets look at product crowdfunding as it is the easiest, most successful and established model to demonstrate.

Take a look at a gadget development example – stimulating your online community to fund, promote, buy and further develop a product. (This can be applied to build your own crowdfunding network)

Glif iPhone stand

http://kck.st/uKySku

With a funding target of $10,000 the campaign attracted 2,573 backers raising a total of $137,417

Glif is a simple iPhone 4 / 5 accessory with two primary functions: mounting your iPhone to a standard tripod, and acting as a kickstand to prop your iPhone up at an angle. From these two functions emerge numerous uses: hands-free FaceTiming, watching videos, making movies, using your iPhone as an alarm clock, and many others.

I am the proud owner of a Glif so to are all of my social media collaborators. You can find them now in PC World and High Street geek gadget stores. But it started with a $10,000 crowd funding campaign on Kickstarter.

Ask yourself who is their audience?

Another example:

An Inflatable Solar Light

http://www.indiegogo.com/LuminAID

With a funding target of $10,000 the campaign attracted 1,168 backers raising a total of $51,829

LuminAID Lab is proud to introduce the LuminAID light: a solar-rechargeable, inflatable lamp that packs flat and inflates to create a lightweight, waterproof lantern. Safe, sustainable, and portable, the LuminAID light provides up to six hours of LED light, ideal for disaster relief situations, recreational use outdoors, or in the home as an extra light source. Our mission: make light more affordable, sustainable, and available for everyone.

Again, who is their audience?

These are just 2 projects funded through Crowd-sourcing. The driving concept is to develop an audience who fund your project in return for the first items off the production line. This approach of engagement rewards for grass roots support is common across many crowdfunding platforms called 'perks'.

Next blog - perks and more perspective on funding projects using a “crowd”.